Movie Review: "Tangerines"

War is not the answer.

 

- What's Going On

  Al Cleveland, Renaldo Benson & Marvin Gaye (1971) 

 

"Tangerines": B+.  Momma Cuandito has opined more than once that Howard Zinn On War should be required reading for everyone.  I would like to supplement that thought by adding the film Tangerines, an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee recently released in the US, as required viewing.  This fascinatingly instructive movie delivers a powerful message in an entertaining way, and provides food for thought even several days after having seen it.

 

The setting is Georgia in southwest Asia, just a few months after the official collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991.  Georgia, a beautiful land on the east coast of the Black Sea in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, has become one of fifteen (supposedly) independent countries which were once republics under the USSR.  A civil war has broken out between the Georgian government loyalists and the Abkhazians, who want to separate their northwestern section of the country and form their own.

Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak) is an Estonian carpenter who has made the tough decision to stay in his humble cabin in the Georgian woods, just a quarter mile or so from his neighbor, Margus (Elmo Nuganen). The rest of Ivo's family, including his beautiful granddaughter Mari, whose picture adorns Ivo's living room wall, returned to their native European land when the fighting broke out.  Ivo's time is occupied mostly by making wooden crates which he supplies to Margus, a tangerine farmer with a crop that's ready to be harvested.  Margus is preoccupied with worries over finding laborers to do that work; all the young men have left to become soldiers.

 

When two armed Chechens arrive on Ivo's property, he is unperturbed, inviting them to sit at his table, packing them a lunch and even offering them a bottle of vodka to take on the road.  The Chechens are mercenaries from the Caucasus, soldiers of fortune hired by the poorly equipped rebel Abkhazians.  This is not really Chechnya's war.  Ivo's stance as an Estonian is that he does not have a dog in the fight, so it's not his war either.  Or is it?

 

The tranquil setting is abruptly shattered shortly thereafter, as a lethal firefight breaks out at the edge of Ivo's property.  Explosions penetrate the air.  Dead bodies from both armies abound.  A jeep sits on the road, incapacitated by a bazooka.  There appears to be just one survivor, a Chechen near death.  After Margus helps Ivo stanch the burly man's bleeding, they drag him into Ivo's cabin and place him in a bed where he lies in a semi-delerious state.  Then they hide the jeep by sending it over a ridge and gather the corpses outside for a mass burial in a shallow grave.  There they discover a mortally wounded young Georgian soldier, barely alive and closer to death than even the Chechen.  Good thing Ivo's cabin has two bedrooms, because they stash the Georgian in the unoccupied one.  Thus these two soldiers, Ahmed the Chechen (Georgi Nakashidze) and Niko the Georgian (Misha Meskhi), who just minutes ago belonged to military units blasting away at each other, are now both under Ivo's roof, in separate rooms a few feet apart.

 

As predicted by the village doctor summoned by Ivo, Ahmed is the first of the badly wounded pair to recover, although far from fit to return to the front.  Upon learning who his "next door neighbor" is, he vows to kill him as soon as he can muster the strength.  But as his relationship with Ivo evolves and Ahmed realizes that carrying out his threat would be disrespectful to the man who saved his life, the Chechen backtracks a little, promising he won't do the deed until Niko steps out of Ivo's house or sticks his head out the window. "What if he pees out the window?" asks Ivo.

 

What will happen when Niko becomes ambulatory?  Will he and Ahmed kill each other?  How will Ivo, more than twice the young men's age, be able to stop them?

 

Three-quarters of the way through the movie, I still had no idea how the enmity would be resolved, or even if it could be.  The story raises big questions, and better yet, comes up with some wise answers, mostly provided by Ivo.  Ulfsak, in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- his age, conveys the gravitas, dignity and strength required to play the part of Ivo perfectly.

 

As the final credits roll, the camera pans out over the snowcapped Caucasus, with the twilight blue sky behind them.  That beautiful panoramic shot reminded me of the Sochi Winter Olympics held last year, when the NBC cameras treated us to similar views.  The comparison is not coincidental; Sochi is only thirty miles from the Georgia border.